Receipt of Written Communications in International Commercial Arbitration

The dispatch, delivery and receipt of written communications are vexing issues in the context of international commercial arbitration. One possible avenue would be to subject their regulation to the seat’s civil procedure rules governing judicial proceedings. However, such rules may produce adverse effects in respect of arbitral proceedings, particularly as concerns speed, the desire to avoid the seat’s public bureaucracy and the rigidity of civil procedure rules, and confidentiality. It was for this reason that a specialized provision in the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration was devoted to this issue, if for no other reason than to provide clarity through existing practices in the field. Article 3 of the Model Law—the focus of this article as it is deemed to reflect a general principle of civil procedure law common to the majority of nations—concerns the delivery and receipt of any written communication served by one party to another, as well as the notification of the award under Article 31(4) of the Model Law.